Good grief! Cant say I've ever really looked at fanfic before so this is a bit of an eye opener. Some 'normal' fiction but the rest of it's like a train wreck - you don't want to look but can't help yourself.
I guess it's an insight into what people really want to read?

Good grief! Cant say I've ever really looked at fanfic before so this is a bit of an eye opener. Some 'normal' fiction but the rest of it's like a train wreck - you don't want to look but can't help yourself.
I guess it's an insight into what people really want to read?

If you're looking for a good (i.e. not brainbleach-inspiring) place to start, last year's Yuletide Collection is a reasonable list. Yuletide is a fanfic gift exchange focused on "small fandoms," meaning those that don't already have huge collections of fanfic. This includes literary fandoms like the Vorkosigan Saga, and has extended into "fandoms that don't actually exist until someone writes for them at Yuletide"--like the song "What's Your Mama's Name, Child?"

If you don't want to need mental floss, skip anything marked "E", and especially anything tagged "crack." And anything with the letters "RPF" -- that stands for "Real People Fic." (And although the Wait Wait Don't Eat Me story is *excellent*--and got reported on the NPR website--I don't recommend that people new to fanfic just wander around looking at RPF stories; that way lies madness, possibly involving Stephen Colbert and tentacles.)

I was thinking that slash was for any sexual crossings-- didn't realize it was m/m or f/f only. I only wrote Gandolf because-- not being a Tolkien fan-- I couldn't remember the name of the character played by Liv Tyler in the movies.

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Originally Posted by rakulos

Good grief! Cant say I've ever really looked at fanfic before so this is a bit of an eye opener. Some 'normal' fiction but the rest of it's like a train wreck - you don't want to look but can't help yourself.

And this is the truth faced by people who have to plow through slush piles. Most people who think that they can write-- can't. Most self-published writing is very, very, very, very bad.

I was thinking that slash was for any sexual crossings-- didn't realize it was m/m or f/f only. I only wrote Gandolf because-- not being a Tolkien fan-- I couldn't remember the name of the character played by Liv Tyler in the movies.

Arwen. Yeah, there's a great shortage of Hermione/Arwen. (The m/f stuff is called "het." Fanfic not focused around the romantic elements is called "gen.")

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And this is the truth faced by people who have to plow through slush piles. Most people who think that they can write-- can't. Most self-published writing is very, very, very, very bad.

Archiveofourown tends to be high-quality as fanfic goes, because it's fairly new, and founded by people who are long-time fanficcers. It hasn't had time to collect the schlock that clutters up fanfiction.net. (There's some good stuff at ff.net... but there's also a whole lot of teenage first writing, twitch shudder.) AO3 (Archive Of Our Own) has limited membership for now, and the writing quality tends to be high.

The writing *subject matter* ranges from "missing episodes" of tv series to bizarre erotica.

Aaah, that is awesome! Sometimes I feel the need to revisit my mis-spent youth and peruse fanfic again. Now it's even easier!

I'm kinda sad that this didn't exist when I was around 12-15... it's a shame how many more hours I could have wasted reading wonderfully terrible, perverted dreck that I missed out on. And portably, and without people being able to tell what I was reading! My formative years could have been more more interesting. Sigh. I guess I'll just have to savor it now! What? I have no shame!

Last edited by bridgetostars; 09-16-2010 at 06:17 PM.
Reason: misspell!

1) A Harry Potter fic that was Weasley twin slash. As in, slash---with each other. With your identical twin. Ewwww.

2) A Joan of Arcadia fic that was Joan/G-d slash. So, the Almighty One not only chooses to manifest on the earthly plane for the purposes of sex, but a) chooses underage girls as their partner and b) chooses underage girls who are their employee. God as the lesbian sexual harassing pedophile. Great fanfic idea! Not.

Aaah, that is awesome! Sometimes I feel the need to revisit my mis-spent use and peruse fanfic again. Now it's even easier!

+1 bridgetostars' entire post. I spent a lot of time when I was younger reading fanfic, and some of it was actually good. I'm glad I can revisit old fandoms, like welcoming back old friends.

The actual ePUBs are decently formatted too.

Second the idea to avoid 'crack'. Well, some crack is rather addictive to read (hence the term), and they don't make any pretensions to be high-brow writing a lot of times.

The worst fanfic I've ever read was Frodo/Nazgul slash. It became rather notorious when I was still involved in a little corner of the Middle-earth fandom. (That said, some of the best fanfic I've read was also in the same fandom.)